Top Rated Future

Yesterday, Baseball America posted its first list of top 10 prospects for the 2012 season. According to them, the best set of 10 in all of baseball belongs to...the Seattle Mariners. This is more than a feather in the franchise's cap. It is validation of the team's process.

Posting Fees

Tokyo Dome
(image courtesy eyeonjapan.com)

I'm too late to really say much about the Rangers signing Yu Darvish that hasn't already been said. I'm okay with that. I want to try to come up with some method to quantify what a reasonable posting fee is, but I still haven't come up with anything. Leave something in the comment thread if you have an idea. I'm all ears.

Instead of continuing to feel like I'm hurling myself against a brick wall, I'm going to go in a different direction.

Snow Day

With snowmageddon 2012 dumping whatever it shall bring, today is a perfect day to talk about snow. What better day to remember one of the more unique series in Mariners history? I'm talking about the early-season showdown between the Mariners and Indians in 2007.

The Somewhat Shocking Pineda Trade

Maybe this is finally the deal that convinces the national media that the Mariners will not trade Felix Hernandez.

Michael Pineda and Jose Campos are both gone, to the Yankees for Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi. The deal involves lots of young, talented blood, which makes it the kind of deal that stings for both teams.

The upside for the Yankees is clear. They already had offense, but coupled that with a shaky rotation. If Pineda has any sort of legitimate encore to his rookie campaign, the Yankees are in good shape to contend for a world championship. I wrote a post on Pineda back in May, when he was emerging as a force. I stand by my words I wrote back then.

Campos is a loss that could make the Mariners look bad. He's still young, and a young pitcher to boot, but he looks like he is going to be quite good. The Yankees might have just acquired a decade worth of talent in the front end of their rotation.

The Mariners definitely got some talent in return though.

Mariners Will Not Sign Prince Fielder

Prince Fielder (photo by Steve Paluch, Flickr)

There is a strong argument that Prince Fielder to the Mariners is a natural fit, maybe even the most natural fit in baseball at this point. The only other seemingly obvious teams are the Nationals and Rangers (though the Rangers keep saying they aren't interested, and Yu Darvish is going to be a huge investment, so Texas is probably telling the truth). Certainly, no team could use Fielder's power more than the Mariners, and it probably doesn't hurt that Jack Zduriencik was the guy that scouted him when Milwaukee drafted him.

With that said, it dawned on me this week why the Mariners are not going to sign Prince Fielder.

2012 BBA Hall of Fame Vote

I posted my Hall of Fame ballot right before the new year. The results for the BBA vote are in. Barry Larkin and Jeff Bagwell made the cut. I am sad that Edgar Martinez did not, but he made a pretty strong showing. Click "continue reading" for the official release, complete with voting results:

2011 Mariners Connections

On the personal/professional side, things are going to change significantly for me this year, and we will see how that impacts my blog posts (most importantly, my frequency). Regardless, one thing I hope to do is provide more data visualizations.

So, I'll kick off 2012 with the type of graphic that I hope to make a little more often. Just how connected are MLB teams these days? Let's take a look at the 2011 Mariners to get a feel for what modern baseball movement looks like:

Every player who appeared for the Mariners in 2011, and at some point of their career was in another organization, is visualized on the map. Blue dots are the 30 MLB teams. Red lines symbolize players that left at some point in 2011. Green lines indicate acquisitions. Brighter greens mean the move was more recent. More opaque lines are more direct. Click on the image for a larger view. More details after the jump.